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It’s fair to say that Daniel José Older is having a very good year.
In the first week of 2015, Penguin published his first novel, Half-Resurrection Blues. By the end of January, Anika Noni Rose’s production company had optioned the film and television rights to the book, as well as rights for the following two in the series. This week sees him publish a hotly anticipated young adult novel called Shadowshaper.
To top it off, he got married in March.
Until 2014, Older worked by day as an emergency medical technician in Manhattan. He wrote mostly at night. And he sees himself, explicitly, as an outsider to the literary and publishing scene: “I entered the writing work clearly and strategically to do this thing, to write these books, to get them into the world and fuck with people, and to generally fuck shit up,” he says at a restaurant in Brooklyn.
Shadowshaper is set in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Brooklyn, where Older lives. The protagonist, a young Afro-Latina named Sierra, learns about her family’s history of supernatural powers. She can, as it turns out, interact with the spirit world. Her family has gone to great lengths to conceal that fact from her, but now it’s Sierra’s responsibility to protect them from what’s coming.
Older’s imagined Brooklyn is full of danger, less gentrified than the real-life version, and decidedly diverse. “We’re doing something very political by deciding whose life matters, where we’re going to focus things, and who we erase from the picture,” he says. This kind of diversity, he feels, is lacking in most other fantasy YA novels. “When we create worlds based on this world that don’t include diversity, we’re lying,” he says. “We’re not being honest as authors. Even if it’s infused with magical powers, or zombies, or whatever you’ll have, we should still be trying to tell the truth. Then, it becomes a question of what truth, how are we telling it, and whose truth do we take the time to repeat?”
Older is critical of books that he says fail to include racial diversity – such as, he says, The Hunger Games. He chalks it up to a “phenomenal lack of imagination” on the part of the author, and a laziness, he feels, that is designed to keep some people out of the picture. “To be able to figure out all these quirky things about what you imagine the future will be like, and not somehow have any folks of colour doing anything heroic or worthwhile in it, what happened?” he asked. “Where did we go?”
I recently uploaded the first 25 pages of my MS on my website: www.snpetro.com/. Below is a description of my novel and a link to the first 25 pages.
Human women are ideal for seeding Castra’s alien army. But the children of such a union are not conceived without a price. One part his mother, and nine parts his father, Lucian is like no other child. With his father absent, his mother faces raising him in squalor, and in a country unfamiliar to her, Monde.
Lucian grows up in a world of politics, religious contention, and spies. But what he craves is war. And he has been gifted with the body, mind, and courage of a warrior. His formidable strength and superior intelligence incite both awe and envy. He earns praise from as high as the king. But not all see Lucian’s abilities as benign. Suspicion soon forms around him. His inborn charm keeps most enemies at bay. But not for long. He struggles to suppress growing, dark urges. And he sees the world as rank with weak men and vain challenges. This leaves him to question why he was born with such gifts. Are they to be wasted on a world he feels distant from?
This book is currently undergoing editing. I hope to have it ready for agent submission by the fall.
Read the first 25 pages (author’s edit): The Warrior from Monde, first 25 pages
Please read the sample, and leave a comment on my site here: https://snpetro.com/
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| Credit: John Moreno/Argonne National Laboratory |
Topics: Applied Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Physics and Pop Culture, Semiconductor Technology, Thermodynamics
1. Vapor pressure
2. Friction
3. Drag coefficient
4. Momentum
5. Rolling resistance
Bonus: Air temperature
Phys.org: Five properties of physics that affect your gas mileage, Louise Lerner
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| Image Source: Spring 8 |
Topics: Optical Physics, Laser, Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, X-rays
Physics Today:
Brighter and faster: The promise and challenge of the x-ray free-electron laser
Philip H. Bucksbaum and Nora Berrah
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| Image Source: Wikiquote "Once you have learned to read you will forever be free." "Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." More at Brainyquote.com |
Topics: #BlackLivesMatter, Civil Rights, Frederick Douglass, History, Human Rights
He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country school houses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.
The papers and placards say that I am to deliver a Fourth of July Oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for me. It is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall seems to free me from embarrassment.
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable-and the difficulties to he overcome in getting from the latter to the former are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence I will proceed to lay them before you.
This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the Fourth of July. It is the birth day of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, as what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. l am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young.-Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.
History is a Weapon: The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, Frederick Douglass
Related link: What the Civil War Can Teach us About Patriotism, Jarret Ruminski, PhD Historian, "That Devil History" blog
Welcome to the Premiere Webisode of the series, 8zombies! A 3D action, animated series about survival in a post zombie apocalyptic world.
Written, produced, directed and animated by Nolos Quinn.
Visit our Facebook page and website, www.8zombies.com for news, updates, etc.....
Comment - Like - Share
Thanks for viewing!!
I am currently working on my first werewolf story. Im not sure about it though. I have written about witches, amazons, faeries, mermaids and even a ghost, but never a werewolf. I was watching the TV show, Bitten. It is about the only woman to survive being turned into a werewolf.
On this show one of her pack mates is African American. It was hard to find information on werewolves let alone African American ones.
I put my story up on a site called Watt pad. if you are interested in reading it, inbox me and i will send a link to you.
I could use some feed back on it. In other news, i finally decided to go to school for writing. I know i dont need a degree in writing, but i want to do it for me. A bachelor's degree in Creative Writing for entertainment, would be something great for me to have. I will be the first one in my family to have a degree in something.
I am also gathering information on another character i am making. I am sure im going to have to change her name. I had named her Gensys, because she was the beginning of a new type of human. She is an elemental and this is her natural progression. I wanted her to be a superhero, but i am having a time trying to create powers for her. I dont want to copy off of another superhero by accident.
Since i was accepted here I have seen the magazine with the name i had picked on it, so maybe that is a sign that im right where im supposed to be. I am still going to look for another name and keep gathering information.
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| New color images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft show two very different faces of the mysterious dwarf planet, one with a series of intriguing spots along the equator that are evenly spaced. NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI |
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Planetary Science, Pluto, Space Exploration
1. Astronomy: Spots on Pluto fascinate as New Horizons gets the all clear, NASA, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, Laurel, Maryland
2. Space.com: On Pluto's Doorstep: Latest Photos by Approaching New Horizons Probe, Space.com staff
Writers of shorter works could lose out on revenue as company’s Kindle Owners Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited no longer pay per copy downloaded
Self-published authors could be paid as little as $0.006 per page read under new rules planned by Amazon.
Writers who make their works available through Amazon’s Kindle Owners Lending Library, and a similar service called Kindle Unlimited, will no longer be paid per copy downloaded following a move announced last week.
Instead, they would receive a payment based on how many pages had actually been read, with longer books receiving a higher potential payment than shorter works.
In an email to authors, sent on Wednesday, Amazon revealed exactly how little that payment would be.
Angel Lover
By: Tricia Skinner
I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Half-human angels with a mission to kill their fallen angel fathers, oh the DRAMA.
This is the second book in Skinner’s Angel Assassins Series. Even though I missed the first one, it was not hard at all getting drawn in and caught up. The hero of the story, Kasdeja (Kas for short) is the tech savvy Nephilim (half-angel) in a group of Nephilim, abandoned by their fathers as children and sentenced to die for being half human.... MORE
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| Source: Claes Johnson on Mathematics and Science |
Topics: Humor, Modern Physics, Physics and Pop Culture, Quantum Mechanics
1. No Indication That Entanglement Transfers Information (think "telepathy").
2. Consciousness Is Not Necessarily the Key to Collapsing the Wave-Function (Schrödinger’s cat, The Uncertainty Principle, the observer).
3. It Doesn't Only Describe the Subatomic Level (color, elasticity, black holes).
4. Speaking of a ‘Wave-Particle Duality’ Is Not Exactly Correct (see paper below).
Epoch Times: 4 Common Misconceptions About Quantum Physics, Tara MacIsaac
Physics arXiv: Quantum mechanics: Myths and facts, Hrvoje Nikolic
Theoretical Physics Division, Rudjer Boˇskovic Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
After more than half a century of sterling service to webslinging, Peter Parker is to be replaced as Marvel's official Spider-Man by a mixed-race character who for four years has been wearing the suit in an alternate universe.
Miles Morales, a teenager from Brooklyn with an African American father and Puerto Rican mother, has played a version of Spider-Man since 2011, but will take over the mainstream role from Parker this autumn.
He appears in a series of comics set in an alternate universe where Peter Parker has died, and where he has reluctantly received a set of superpowers similar to Parker's after being bitten by a genetically altered spider.
Spider-Man is Marvel's most successful character, selling nearly $1.3 billion of merchandise last year, eclipsing their next bestseller, The Avengers, which shifted around $325 million.
Spider-Man's popularity stems in part from the that fact there could be anyone under that hood, and the character has been portrayed as different characters across the Marvel comics universe.
Morales is the first black character to wear the Spidey suit, but the second Latino after the half-Mexican geneticist, Miguel O'Hara who featured in a 1992 comic set in the year 2099.
Miles Morales was introduced in the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, which run parallel to Marvel's mainstream universe, and his arrival received mixed reactions. Some people criticised the character's existence as politically correct, but many non-white readers praised the fact that either they, or their children, now had a big-name role model in the Marvel Universe.
Topics: Batteries, Green Tech, Semiconductors, Materials Science, STEM
Phys.org: Samsung develops lithium-ion battery with nearly double the life, Bob Yirka
Okay; this is a rant, and will probably be my only, or one of very few blogs. That's because I have other venues for writing.
Anyway: Here is something that has caused me consternation for a very long time. Albinos in the media have always been seen as other than human. We have been given red demonic eyes, stark white unruly hair and skin that resembles a corpse or a powdered doughnut.
In fact, we have been portrayed as vampires, aliens, an even underground cannibal brainless brutes. Although I do know some brainless brutes with albinism, this is by no means the norm for people like me.
Believe me; if I had the power to make my eyes glow and make people step out in front of trucks, I certainly would. But I can't do that so breathe easy.
If you have ever seen Village of the Damned, The Time Machine, The Omega Man, or read a Marvel comic you know what I mean. If you've seen End of Days (I know that guy) read The Famished Road or Sent For You Yesterday, you are all too familiar with the albino as some otherworldly freak. I'm not even going to talk about Powder. ugh.
There are people who actually think we are witches or magic.Sometimes this is rather funny. I met a man who thought I was a witch and offered to save my soul. But sometimes it can be downright dangerous. People in parts of Africa have been hacking up albino children collecting their body parts for sale. They have had to put children in safe camps for their protection.
But I digress.
There was a man who contacted me about an albino character he wanted to create for a game. I suggested he give the character long blond dreads. That was a long time ago and I haven't heard anything.
So what would happen if there were a character in a comic book that was just a person with albinism? No superhuman powers, not out to conquer the universe. It would be just like putting an evil dwarf in your story who wasn't evil.
It's all about using disability and difference, as a metaphor for "the other".
I'm not going to offer any answers here since I don't have any myself. How do you portray a person with albinism in the comics? Why would you put them in the story? How would you draw them? I'll let you figure that out. I just thought I'd give you some food for thought.
A new social network that uses a points-based system to encourage people to interact with content is closing in on 1 million registered users since it launched earlier this month, according to the company's CEO.
"We've been around for a week. We are already serving significant impressions," said Bill Ottman, the founder and CEO of Minds, in an interview last week. "We're not saying we're an ad network on the scale of Facebook or Google or television: It's the potential of what it might become."
Minds has existed as a blogging platform since 2012, reaching 30,000 users in its private alpha mode. But on June 19, the developers behind it launched a new social network and associated mobile applications for Apple and Android devices. And according to Ottman, it's already wildly popular, with almost 1 million accounts.
Topics: Einstein, Gravity, General Relativity, Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Schrödinger's Cat
Scientific American: Gravity Kills Schrödinger's Cat, Elizabeth Gibney and Nature magazine
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| Fig 1. Graphene and its descendants: top left: graphene; top right: graphite = stacked graphene; bottom left: nanotube=rolled graphene; bottom right: fullerene=wrapped graphene (adapted from ref.[1]).2 National University of Singapore |
Topics: Graphene, Materials Science, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology, STEM
Scientific American: Graphene: Looking beyond the Hype, Emma Stoye and ChemistryWorld
